Until Every Noise is Drowned
by Semby
Summary: Future Angel is still struggling with his inner demons. BA


Title: Until Every Noise is Drowned  
Summary: Future Angel (B/A, but it's more Angel-centric) still fighting with his inner demons.  
A/N: Written for Free Verse challenge on LJ – lines separated in italics are from my assigned poetry snippet by Joy Icayan.  
Disclaimer: I am but a lowly, non-profiting fanfic writer.  
Thanks to: GarniGal for the beta.

Even though my life is remarkably different now, I still sleep through most of the day. Fighting the good fight hasn't been as compelling as it used to be, so there's little to do until the evening – when she gets home. We have our comfortable little suburban house and our immensely satisfying relationship, and sometimes I can make myself believe that my life has always felt this way, rather than two and a half centuries of fighting and darkness. But she goes out and works nine to five to support us while I stay at home with the curtains drawn. She gets to play at normal; I still don't belong in this world. If I made a habit of waking before five, I'd only have more hours to dwell on the ways in which I'm still not worthy of being in her life.

It started four years ago, which was three years after the loss of Wolfram and Hart and the last of my family. I hadn't spoken to her since the last time I saw her in Sunnydale until I ran into her in a dirty bar in Seattle that night. It didn't matter that we hadn't spoken in years. We'd both been going through rough times. We sat talking for hours, not discussing the distant past, a subject on which we've remained quiet to this day, but what we'd been doing recently. She had spent some time simply living, some time working with the new Watcher's Council and the slayers, and now she was back in school. I had spent two years with Warlocks in Tibet, at the advice of a werewolf I know, learning and practicing to control my demon and be more connected with my soul – to feel it physically and defend it if it were ever in danger. She proved herself much bolder than the girl I remembered and immediately asked if I had put that to the test – and then whether I wished to. She never mentioned whether she had become cookies yet and I thought it best not to ask.

She arrives home an hour or so later than normal today. I ask how her day has been and what she's been doing; she shrugs off the question, implying it's been nothing different than the usual, but I can smell new and different locations and people on her and I know she's not informing me on all aspects of her life. I know I have no reason to believe that she's being deliberately deceiving – she probably just thinks I wouldn't be interested - but it infuriates me to know that there are pieces of her outside life that she cannot share with me physically and doesn't care to share vocally. After she greets me with a kiss, she walks behind me and doesn't see how I'm restraining my other face from appearing. I try to think of Tibet.

It's like this too often these days. It was different when we first started living together. I felt like we were sharing a life; now I feel as if I have to reach out and grab bits and pieces of her life just to have a life at all. It provokes me more than I'd like. I've had plenty of experience over the years dealing with my darker side, even with a soul, but now it seems like it's coming out every day more and more. Every time I think about the experiences she's having without me, every time I think about the other people out there who get to listen to her jokes and her laughter and see her hair shimmer in the sunlight while I'm not even informed of these activities - it takes all of my self restraint to not want to kill someone. Worse, she's the one I usually crave to kill.

The phone rings and I wish we could ignore it but she answers. It's Xander. I'm seething. She chats with him, laughs at something he says, looks me right in the eyes and somehow doesn't notice that even though I'm usually so cold, right now I'm boiling. I sit, quietly, waiting as I have all day, for her to come _home_, come back and actually be mine again. I notice at some point that Xander has passed the phone to Willow. Years ago that would have put me at ease, but now Willow's just another person keeping her from me. Don't they understand that I wait _all day_ for her to come home? Don't they realize these few hours are all I have? Don't they realize that it's hard enough to know that they have her out there, without having to share my time with her here as well? Don't they know that when she's here, she's _mine_?

She turns away and uses her free hand to fiddle with her hair. My eyes dart to the glimpses of bare neck that appear. I imagine myself stepping forward, removing the phone her hand and Willow's intrusive voice from her ear, ripping her throat out and pounding her into the floor until she loses the ability to beg me to stop. I wipe the visions of blood soaking the kitchen floor from my traitorous mind - lie to myself that I don't have those kinds of fantasies.

She hangs up the phone and I put on a false relaxed face as her eyes meet mine. She always says my eyes are warm and soothing; she doesn't see everything that's behind them. She leads me to the bedroom and I can tell that her thoughts are wicked. Not as wicked as mine, but then I'm better at hiding these things than she is.

_And I will cover her ears until every noise is drowned and all the world is but a fish view._

Only hours later, she sleeps beside me. She seems to be having troubling dreams. A thought whispers through my head, _you could take her now…_ and I brush it off angrily. Suddenly she snuggles against me and I instinctively wrap my arms around her; she instantly seems calm and peaceful. I hold her tightly and protectively against my chest, suddenly desperately wanting to keep whatever haunts her dreams away, and find her heartbeat soothing me, pressed so close against me that I can pretend it's actually mine. Within seconds, I feel relaxed and don't have to chase away the bad thoughts or pretend they're not there, because they aren't. It is times like this that I'm glad I'm the freak, the nocturnal one. I sleep away the day, but at night I can stay awake and have this moment. During these hours, I'm at peace.

It is in these moments that I forget what it feels like to lose her to the daylight hours, and I forget why it angers me when she comes home with stories about where she's been and who she's seen today. When we are this contented, how could there be anything wrong? How could I deny her the right she has to spend her time in the sunlight with her friends?

I can't forget that only hours ago, red and black were swimming behind my eyelids, and the demon taunting inside me was bringing forth visions of her broken and bleeding and I can't deny the dirty, guilty pleasure the sight gave me. But even though I can remember those thoughts and desires, I don't feel them now. I'm grounded, peaceful and in love, just as I've always been when I've felt her this close and connected to me. I feel my soul at its strongest, and my heart almost feels warm - as if it could start beating at any moment.

I almost want to wake her up to share this feeling with her, to show her how perfect it is: _look, when we're entwined so closely I can hardly tell where I end and you begin._ But she needs this peace, this quiet, as much as I need it and need to give it to her, so I let her sleep on. I can take this feeling with me and pass it to her in the morning. I can happily lie here just to watch her breathe. For now, love has defeated that which threatens it. When it truly matters, it always will.

_I will stare at her and I will be silent. For her, I will be still._


End file.
